What may remain etched in the memory of many people following last weekend’s governorship election in Edo State may be the picture of Governor Godwin Obaseki sitting down in the wee hours of Sunday on the corridor of the collation centre of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC in Benin City all alone.

Video images showed him handling his phone apparently trying to send messages to someone. Following that, he was shown being marched away from the commission’s office following an abortive move to protest what he alleged as the manipulation of figures from the election that held the day before.

The governor cut a sorry picture of a man helpless as the forces of state overwhelmed him. The governor and his favoured party have alleged that their agents were locked out of the collation centre during which they claimed figures were manipulated to declare contrary results as cast by voters.

What goes around actually comes around. Exactly eight years ago, Obaseki as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC was reportedly the beneficiary of the same manipulation.

At that time in 2016, following the election on September 28, 2016, in the wee hours of the following day, enablers of the ruling party in the state were alleged to have shut out the opposition and done whatever they did and Obaseki was the following day announced as the winner of the election.

The developments in Edo in the last week have inevitably brought out warning signals of serious threats to Nigeria’s democracy with the most ominous menace being the collation centre.

The most significant oddity in Edo last weekend was the fact that collation was aborted in some local government areas and relocated to the State headquarters of INEC where oppositionists claim they were refused entry.

That was a fundamental breach of INEC procedures and guidelines which the commission’s officials remarkably failed to address. Why was the scheduled venue for the collation changed? As with the commission’s willful refusal to use the IREV portal in the 2023 presidential election, INEC has again failed to give any logical explanation for the decision not to abide by its guidelines on the collation of results.

The controversy around the collation of the results in Edo again brings to fore the long-held belief that collation centres are the axis of evil in Nigeria’s electoral process.

The brazen disruption and disregard of the laid down rules for collation of election results as we now know are helped by corrupt INEC officials working in cahoots with security agencies.

In Edo, it was reported that a high- ranking police officer masterminded the relocation of the collation centres from at least two local government areas to the INEC headquarters.

Expectedly, no one has been questioned as to why this was done. INEC that should ordinarily defend the integrity of its systems and procedures has been lame to respond.

It is suffice to say that the brash disregard of the electoral process was not countermanded by superior authorities of the commission which under the laws should have reviewed the process to allow a fair assessment of the complaints.

It is remarkable that many of the observer groups including YIAGA Africa were ferocious in their condemnations of the processes that took place in Edo State last weekend.

As some now say what you need to win an election in Nigeria is to have sufficient money to bribe INEC, and security officials and you are on course to being declared winner of the election. The next step is to use state resources to defend the election in the judiciary.

It is perhaps against this background that the review of the Edo election by Prof Sam Amadi, director of the Abuja School of Political and Social Thought comes to mind.

In his now viral conference, Prof Amadi lamented that the continued progression in error by the Nigerian state towards manipulative elections could sooner than thought destroy the country’s democracy.

Amadi was on spot in pointing out the dangers in allowing INEC as it is to carry on the game of elections without fundamental reforms. The appointment of persons into the electoral management body as embodied in the positioning of clearly partisan aides of political actors is one of the most visible dangers of the present setup.

No one would believe that the former aides of political actors would conduct elections that would not be susceptible to malpractices.

What Prof Amadi recommends and which your correspondent fully adopts is to implement the recommendations of the Justice Mohammed Uwais panel instituted by President Umaru Yar‘adua.

It is a pity that President Goodluck Jonathan failed to implement the recommendations of that committee.

It will be foolhardy for anyone to expect President Bola Tinubu to implement this prescription.

Political actors including opposition leaders must put pressure on the National Assembly to push through the recommendations. If Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, and other 2027 gladiators are really keen on keeping Nigeria’s democracy they should bring pressure on their members in the National Assembly to go in the direction of the Uwais report.

They can move in this direction quickly given the fact that the APC at the inauguration of the present House of Representatives was a minority. Given the issues and apprehension in the land, it is possible to get a sufficient number of lawmakers from the APC to move in this direction and perhaps save Nigeria’s democracy.

If not, Nigeria’s democracy may die sooner than we can imagine.